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Friday, August 3, 2012

Food, Family, Friday: BACON -- 'Nuf said

On a recent night, I added bacon to a simple pasta
sauce.Regular readers know it won’t end
up that simple, but it’s a good place to start.

It’s actually a pretty standard recipe that I borrowed from
Mark Bittman.It’s essentially one 28
oz. can of whole tomatoes crushed up with your hands, a small handful of basil
leaves added to a bunch of good olive oil and enough garlic to wipe the
Twilight series from the memories of an entire generation of teen girls.Usually, I make this dish with Spanish
chorizo, but I’ve lost my source of good Spanish chorizo and hunted for a
decent substitute.

I used Applegate Farms turkey bacon.Here, the word “bacon” makes turkey thigh
meat better.In fact, it is some of the
best bacon I’ve ever had and it cuts out lots of calories and saturated fat.

Bacon is undergoing a renaissance after many years with a
bad reputation that, I submit, was due largely to bad bacon.Pick up the average name brand package of
bacon at the store, look in the little window on the back of the package and
you’ll see a mass of fat whispering to you about a place where meat might once
have been.But, don’t worry.That fat has been salted to within an inch of
its life so it can stay on the shelf until some father who knows no better
picks it up as a treat for the kids.

New sources of bacon such as Pederson's Farms, Applegate Farms
and others are leading this renaissance.These bacons are largely uncured which means they actually taste like
something other than salt and the animals themselves are allowed to move from
time to time so they develop meat along with the fat on their bellies.Things get better.At Whole Foods Markets, you can also buy pork
belly and they will just give you the recipe for turning it into bacon.

Is this a great country, or what?

The bacon renaissance is leading to a certain symbolic
quality being attached to bacon.Bacon
makes everything better.

You might have seen commercials calling for a “bacon latte.”Bacon shows up in the new generation of
designer burger restaurants.And it’s
difficult to find chefs who don’t use bacon to make traditional dishes
better.In fact, this idea that bacon
makes anything better animates a video from Youtube sensations Rhett and Link.

And if you’re a parent who does not know who Rhett and Link are, then you need cooler children.Or
perhaps you could just rub some bacon on them.

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About Me

My mother believed that anything worth eating was also worth frying. Mom's vegetable repertoire was limited. I was about 30, shopping with my California-raised bride, when I discovered that spinach was not naturally a bunch of green yuck that oozed out of a can.
Food and cooking is my hobby, my passion and a scholarly interest. It is also at the center of our family life.
Of course, Dad's cooking presents some unique hazards that are just built into the male DNA. It is said that men will only do things that are either dirty or dangerous and that pretty much describes the kitchen when I am in my frenzy. Early in our marriage, my wife would enter the kitchen and say some things that, well, can't be shared in a family-oriented blog, but you can easily find those words in other corners of the Internet. Over time, though, she discovered that there was a direct correlation between the level of utter destruction and the quality of the meal. These days, she comes into the kitchen, surveys the debris and says, "Oh, this is going to be good."